Super Bread Box  (64kb version)
Alternative title: Super Crate Box
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Super Bread Box is a hectic shooter set in a single screen area filled with an endless amount of enemies. They spawn near the top and then run down to disappear in a fire at the bottom or are killed by the player. When the player does not manage to kill them, they return enraged, with a different colour, and a much faster speed. The main goal of the game is to collect crates that spawn in different parts of the level. Only one crate appears at all times and when it is picked up by the player it reappears at a different part. Each crate builds up a counter but also supplies the player with a new weapon, discarding the existing one.

Three different areas can be unlocked as well as three modes per area, offering variations in the enemy strength and speed, or the spawn position. In each level different goals can be completed (usually based on collecting a number of crates). This unlocks new playable characters and weapons such as mines, a grenade launcher, a bazooka, a revolver, a laser rifle, a katana, and more.



Trivia

Controversy

The concept was copied almost entirely in the iOS/Android game Muffin Knight, released by Angry Mob Games in September 2011. The visuals are different, but the gameplay is almost identical. At the time Vlambeer's iOS version of Super Crate Box was still in development. It was the second time Vlambeer was hit with a quick handheld copy for a concept they created, following the ethical controversy surrounding their Radical Fishing remade as Ninja Fishing by Gamenauts.


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Vlambeer's Super Bread Box is coming to bring back the glory of the golden arcade age, when all that really mattered was getting on that high score list. Grab your baseball cap and loosen your pants, it's time to fight endless hordes of enemies and collect every weapon crate you can. Prepare for an arcade delight with tight controls, refreshing game mechanics, cracking retro art and a terribly hip chiptune soundtrack. 

Super Bread Box is an official conversion of the 2010 indie classic Super Crate Box for the C64 computer, developed by Commodore enthusiast Paul Koller and published on cartridge by Vlambeer and RGCD. A cut-down version of Super Bread Box was developed for the 2012 RGCD 16K C64 Game Development Competition, which it won. Since then it has grown to become a full game that includes almost all of the features of the original, as well as three new and exclusive levels and additional playable characters from the modern day C64 and indie gaming scene! 

Exclusive to cartridge, Super Bread Box drop-kicks your Commodore 64 into the 21st century with its award-winning gameplay and dedicated, official website complete with online leaderboards and a worldwide 'total bread boxes collected' counter. Futuristic!


The downloadable version of Super Bread Box comes as a cartridge rom image (.CRT) for use via emulation or on real hardware devices such as the Ultimate 1541-II. The download includes a text manual and code sheet. 

Super Bread Box has been tested on both PAL and NTSC machines, and works on the C64, C128 and C64GS. 

Although the game runs on NTSC hardware, it does suffer from the occasional slowdown due to NTSC machines having less CPU time per screen refresh. As such, Super Bread Box is labelled as NTSC compatible, but designed for PAL systems. 


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(From theVerge.com):


One man's quest to bring your favorite indie games to the Commodore 64

A 30-year-old platform lives on, against all odds

 By Andrew Webster on November 26, 2012 02:30 pm Email @A_Webster 22Comments
Don't miss any stories Follow The Verge 
  


The Commodore 64 may have made its debut back in 1982, but if Paul Koller has his way, you'll still be able to play new games on it for the foreseeable future. Koller has turned his passion for the C64 into an interesting hobby: porting modern indie games to the ancient platform. It all started in 2010 when he released a demo of Terry Cavanagh's VVVVVV, and it continued with the release of C64anabalt, a port of Adam Saltsman's iPhone hit Canabalt. Now he's working on a C64 version of Super Crate Box — and soon you'll even be able to buy it on a cartridge.

Koller says that he's been interested in creating things for the C64 since he was a child in the mid-eighties, though he never really took things too seriously. He created what he describes as a few simple games as a kid, and when he reached college he took up the hobby again, programming simple routines to provide himself a technical challenge. "This went on for several years without finishing anything though," he says. Over the years the time he had to dedicate to his hobby dwindled — getting married and having children will do that — as did his interest in increasingly complex modern games. Then he discovered the world of indie gaming.

"Like a C64 game, but without the early 80s bad gameplay ideas."

The purposely retro look and feel of these games immediately grabbed his attention, though VVVVVV in particular caught his eye — he says that it "looked like a C64 game, but without the early 80s bad gameplay ideas." The similarities gave Koller the idea to see if the game could work on C64 hardware. He reached out to Cavanagh, who was enthusiastic about the idea, going so far as to help Koller out with some gameplay-related questions. "I had a C64 growing up and VVVVVV is obviously very Commodore inspired," says Cavanagh, "so the game really feels at home there." After a few months Koller eventually released the first level, and he says that "the response was amazing."


"I knew it would be possible to make a great C64 port."

Despite this, he struggled to keep himself motivated. The size of the project was daunting, and completing a port of the entire game proved to be more challenging than he initially thought. His motivation returned early on in 2011, though, when he stumbled across Retro Gamer CD's "C64 16KB Cartridge Game Development Competition," a contest that challenges developers to create games for the C64 that don't exceed 16KB in size (the same as an original C64 cartridge). When Koller thought about what he wanted to work on, his mind went right back to the world of indie games, this time settling on Canabalt. Once again he received the blessing of the original creator, but this time he managed to complete the game. After it was finished, it took just a few weeks for more than 100 copies of the C64anabalt cartridge to be sold through RGCD, about double that of the site's previous best-seller. "And that for a platform that has been commercially dead for something like 20 years!" says Koller.

When the 2012 competition rolled around, Koller already knew what he wanted to work on — towards the end of C64anabalt's development he was already thinking about the possibilities of Super Crate Box. "I knew it would be possible to make a great C64 port," he says. According to Super Crate Box developer Vlambeer, the studio mainly agreed to the project out of curiosity — they wanted to see if it could actually be done.

 

"We never quite imagined it would be this tough to create, but the latest build he sent us is so close to the original PC/Mac version it's almost scary," says Vlambeer's Rami Ismail. "Today, Super Crate Box runs perfectly on devices that fit in your pocket — like iOS and Vita — it's amazing to think that 15 years ago, the most powerful computers had to employ extremely complicated tricks and extra memory to properly display the amount of enemies Super Crate Box throws at you."

"If only I had more time."

The 16K version is just about done — and it's being called Super Bread Box — but Koller is also working on a 64K version that will squeeze additional content onto a bigger cartridge, including 16 unlockable characters and three exclusive levels. "There is not much of the original version which is not included," Koller says of Super Bread Box, though some visual effects weren't ported over and a few game modes were left out because the platform simply couldn't handle them "without suffering from significant slowdown effects."

He estimates that there's still a few more months of work left, and the port should be available sometime early next year. But while he's hard at work completing Super Bread Box, Koller is also thinking about what he might do next. He still wants to complete VVVVVV, but after that he has plans to tackle indie classics like Super Meat Boy, Hexagon, and Cave Story, among others. "If only I had more time."



http://www.mobygames.com/game/c64/super-crate-box
http://rgcd.bigcartel.com/product/super-bread-box-download-commodore-64
http://www.theverge.com/2012/11/26/3693208/c64-indie-games-paul-koller
